The Rescuers Down Under
(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing the DVD cover of The Great Mouse Detective and posters of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King) Doug (vo): So after The Great Mouse Detective, we all know the release of the Disney films after it, right? Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, and so forth. Wrong. [Clips from ''The Rescuers Down Under are shown. Snippets of the film's score by Bruce Broughton play in the background throughout]'' Doug (vo): Between Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, there was actually another animated film that everybody seems to gloss over: The Rescuers Down Under. Even today, when I bring up The Rescuers Down Under, everybody says, "Oh, the little girl in the cave with the skull and diamond, right?" No, no! Why does everyone always remember the bland, forgettable one? How ironic is that? I’ll admit, out of all the Disney films to get a sequel, it’s kind of weird that they did The Rescuers, but you know what? They put their damnest into this movie. This is one of the best-looking Disney adventures that has ever come out of the studio, and I have no idea why it continues to get the shaft. All right, so what’s the story? Story Doug (vo): We have a little boy in Australia...who, of course, doesn’t have an Australian accent...who comes across a giant golden eagle, the last one alive. He frees her from a trap, but then a poacher, played by George C. Scott, captures him and tries to force him to tell him the location of the bird. This gets attention all the way from across the world and leads to New York, where Bernard and Miss Bianca, voiced again by Bob Newhart and Zsa-Zsa Gabor*, are requested to go down there and save him. Instead of using Orville, the bird from the last movie, we instead this time get Wilbur. Get it? Orville and Wilbur? It works. But it works even better when you have the comedic genius of John Candy supplying the voice. *it's Eva Gabor voicing Bianca. The mistake is mentioned in [[Top 11 Nostalgia Critic F*** Ups Part 3]] Wilbur (John Candy): May I just say, "en chante, senorita", to you? May I? Doug (vo): This is just another great passionate role that he gets into, and he’s wonderful as always. What Miss Bianca doesn’t know is that Bernard is trying to propose to her all throughout the movie, and yet he constantly keeps getting distracted by this other mouse who’s trying to put the moves on her. You really feel for this guy. All he wants to do is pop the question, and some crap keeps happening to interrupt him. It's more of a cock-block than The Legend of Zelda cartoon. Review Doug (vo): Okay, so as you can hear, the story is nothing fantastic. It’s just sort of your basic everyday adventure with little mice, kind of like the first one, except it’s done a million, bajillion, gajillion times better. Like the scene where the boy frees the eagle. He could just free her and then she just takes him back to the nest, right? It’d take a minute to do. But fuck that shit. We get an intense fall off a mountain, flying through the sky, skating on a river, jumping off a waterfall...holy fuck! Just watch some of this animation. awesome and beautiful-looking sequence of Cody flying on the eagle through an Australian river and waterfall is shown briefly Doug (vo): Yeah, this is what you’re missing, folks. How come nobody’s looking at this? On top of that, it’s a good adventure. It’s got some great action scenes, the villain is great...hey, it’s George C. Scott...the main characters are likeable, the backgrounds are unbelievable, the animation, as I said before, is spectacular. It’s fun, it’s funny, it’s just a great family adventure film. [Clips from the short that played before the movie, ''The Prince and the Pauper, are shown]'' Doug (vo): There was even a short before it with Mickey Mouse called The Prince and the Pauper. And you know what? That's also underrated! It's a really good short! Check it out! I'm sure it's on DVD somewhere. [Clips from ''The Rescuers Down Under resume showing]'' Doug (vo): So, okay, why is it this movie gets so overlooked? Well, I got two theories. One is that on the first weekend, the film didn’t open very strong, so Disney immediately pulled all advertising from it. So, the reason you probably never heard of it is because…you weren’t allowed to hear of it. Advertising and publicity after that was kept very tight. But I think the other reason it doesn’t do so hot is because it doesn’t have any of the typical Disney formula. It’s not a fairy tale, there’s no songs, there’s no strong ethics or morals, and it doesn’t have any of the extremely cute, fuzzy animals that they love to market. I mean, the Rescuers are cute, I guess, but it’s no Flounder. But so what? It’s not supposed to be any of those things. It’s just supposed to be a really good adventure film. And not only is it good, it’s incredibly good. Do we look at films like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Terminator 2 as bad simply because they’re not as good as something like Citizen Kane? No. They’re still celebrated, they’re still the top of their class. So how come this one doesn’t get any glory? Final thought Doug (vo): Folks, we gotta turn this around. We have to increase the DVD sales of this movie, because you know what? More people deserve to see it. Yeah, it’s a family action flick, but it’s a phenomenal family action flick, taking a subject material that really had little going for it, and turning it into a frigging experience. Check it out, folks. You won’t regret it. final scene of the film, showing the main characters flying on the giant eagle towards the moon, is shown Category:Transcripts Category:Disneycember Category:Disneycember reviews of Disney Animated Canon Movies Category:Disneycember reviews of traditional animated movies Category:Disney Category:Content Category:Guides